Oregon: Stark, Raving Mad

We’re seeing more and more of this: unaccountable bureaucrats bypassing legislatures and enacting, with absolutely no accountability, insane policies that not only are destructive to democracy, but to people. the best example of this–outside the petty tyrants at the EPA–are the Marxist LGQBTQWERTY cracktivists employed by the Oregon Health Authority. Fox News has the story:

The list of things 15-year-olds are not legally allowed to do in Oregon is long: Drive, smoke, donate blood, get a tattoo — even go to a tanning bed.

But, under a first-in-the-nation policy quietly enacted in January that many parents are only now finding out about, 15-year-olds are now allowed to get a sex-change operation. Many residents are stunned to learn they can do it without parental notification — and the state will even pay for it through its Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan. [skip]

While 15 is the medical age of consent in the state, the decision to cover sex-change operations specifically was made by the Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC).

Members are appointed by the governor and paid by the state of Oregon. With no public debate, HERC changed its policy to include cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty-suppressing drugs and gender-reassignment surgery as covered treatments for people with gender dysphoria, formally known as gender identity disorder.

Surely there must have been many public hearings, and voluminous scientific evidence to support the necessity and efficacy of such “treatments?” Don’t call me Shirley, and you must be kidding. We’re talking about Oregon!

Oregon Health Authority officials directed Fox News to their website. It shows transgender policy was discussed at four meetings in 2014. It was passed without any opposition or even discussion about teenagers’ new access to undergoing a sex change. [skip]

Gender dysphoria is classified by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder in which a person identifies as the sex opposite of his or her birth. It is rare, affecting one out of every 20,000 males and one out of every 50,000 females.

According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, ‘most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty.

Yeah? So what do they know compared to Progressive sex activists?

Dr. Paul McHugh, who led the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department and still practices, said Oregon’s policy amounts to child abuse. ‘We have a very radical and even mutilating treatment being offered to children without any evidence that the long-term outcome of this would be good,’ McHugh said.

Dr. Jack Drescher, a member of the APA who worked on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group, says treatment for gender dysphoria has received a lot more attention in recent years. He said this year New York changed its policy to cover cross-sex hormone drugs and sex-reassignment surgery for Medicaid recipients who are at least 18 years old. He thinks Oregon is offering the treatment too early.

‘Children age 15 may not fully understand all the consequences of the procedures they are undergoing,’ he said.

No kidding. I teach primarily 15 year-olds. There are very good reasons for the term “sophomoric.” In my many years in law enforcement and teaching, I’ve found very, very few children–and they are children–at that age, or even a higher age, capable of making such momentous and life-altering decisions based on anything more grounded than impulse.

To do this to children without parental knowledge or consent is not only obscenely irresponsible, it is playing with fire. People are very, very protective about two things above all others: their pets and their children. Oregon bureaucrats could very well find themselves on the receiving end of deadly violence from parents enraged at the damage done their children and families. While I don’t condone unprovoked and unnecessary violence, I would be hard pressed to render a finding of guilt if I served on a jury.

Fox found at least one misguided soul who thinks it’s grand, because parents may not approve of a 15 year-old’s sex change surgery. And of course, leftist lunatics working for Oregon know better?

The Oregon Health Authority could not say how many Medicaid recipients have been treated for gender dysphoria since the new policy took effect in January.

Really? What are the chances that people like this would establish such a program, while keeping it as hidden as possible, and not follow each and every case with deep interest? They know precisely how many have been treated. They also know the number would outrage the public, though they tried to justify it by claiming it might reduce suicide attempts by one per year. One. Might.

But Dr. McHugh says a sex-change operation, especially for young people with gender dysphoria, is never appropriate.

‘We can help them if we begin to explore with them and their families what they’re fearing about development, what they’re fearing about being a young boy, a young adolescent appropriate to themselves.’

Yeah, well, as I said earlier, what does he know compared to progressive sex activists that think they’re more moral and smarter than everybody else?

It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children,’ said Lori Porter of Parents’ Rights in Education. ‘They’re our children. And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it’s mindboggling.

It is that, but it’s not at all surprising. Progressives in general believe they are intellectually and morally superior to everyone else, particularly parents. They believe it is their self-appointed god-like duty to ensure that children grow up with the “right–actually left–beliefs about everything, so they work very hard to take over the schools and to own the culture. LGQBTQWERTY cracktivists are closely aligned with such people, and their obsession with their sexual identities is more important to them than anything else, with the possible exception of forcing others to either praise them or to absolutely shut up.

Surely Oregon health bureaucrats were willing to defend their work?

HERC officials refused repeated requests by Fox News for an interview and even gave Fox News inaccurate information about the medical director’s work schedule.

Aaron and Melissa Klein

I’ve been reporting on the persecution of Aaron and Melissa Klein, bakers who because of their sincere Christian belief, refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Not only did they lose their business, they have been ordered by the Oregon State Bureaucracy to pay the couple $135,000.00. The first article in the series can be found here, and the second, here. If the Kleins and their attorney needed any additional evidence that the state bureaucracy is utterly, dangerously unhinged when it comes to LGQBTQWERTY issues, this should do the trick.

Bureaucrats in Oregon and elsewhere would be wise to understand that there are some lines no sane person crosses, and Americans may be pushed only so far before they push back, and not rhetorically. Our system of justice works only because most Americans are willing to obey the law because they can reasonably believe that despite our system’s flaws, it is still fundamentally fair and equal. When people can no longer believe that, the first to be targeted will be bureaucrats and politicians that think themselves superior to others and above the law, and particularly those that have aggressively harassed honest citizens.

Glad you are on this. But it may not stay in Oregon. SCOTUS used Roe and its progeny require that states allow teenagers to bypass parental consent for an abortion. It takes no leap of imagination to realize SCOTUS could use Obergefell and what will be its progeny to do the same for something like this. We are getting a preview of hell if good people do not organize and fight this. Quickly!